More Articles

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

AT&T remains the speed-of-service leader among major telecommunications providers in central
Ohio, a new report shows.

AT&T topped Verizon as fastest in text, data and voice speed in the Columbus market, in a
report compiled recently by RootMetrics, an independent mobile-measurement company.

This is the fourth report that RootMetrics has done on the Columbus market, in which it conducts
thousands of call, text and data tests around the area and compares the performance among the top
four mobile carriers: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint.

They were conducted in November 2011, May 2012 and January and June of this year.

In the first two reports, Verizon was the overall winner. AT&T won the third.

This year, AT&T won in the data-performance, text-performance and overall categories. In
another category, voice calling, the study ranked AT&T and Verizon as tied for first place.

In call performance, both AT&T and Verizon had average failure rates of less than 0.3
percent. In other words, an average of about three in 1,000 calls on either service would be
dropped or blocked. When talking about data performance, RootMetrics found that the average time to
download 10 emails was 2.8 seconds for AT&T and 3 seconds for Verizon. But it was 5.4 seconds
for Sprint users and 7.1 seconds for T-Mobile users.

AT&T’s continuing investment locally in its 4G LTE technology is what has kept the company
on top of the RootMetrics survey, not just in Columbus but also in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Akron,
said Adam Grzybicki, president of AT&T Ohio.

“We invested nearly $275 million in our Columbus wireless and wireline networks from 2010
through 2012, and we’ll continue investing in order to give our customers the best possible
experience,” Grzybicki said.

Verizon defended its service as providing “an outstanding experience” for users of smartphones,
tablets and PCs in the mobile broadband network.

“There are many ways of testing performance, yet not all tell the whole story,” said a Verizon
spokesman, who declined to be named. “It’s important to recognize that customer experience depends
more upon consistency in speed. Additionally, it’s important to recognize that reliability,
accessibility and coverage ... are most meaningful to customers.”

Verizon recently added the 500th market in its 4G LTE build-out, meaning that Verizon now offers
the ultra-fast coverage to more than 95 percent of the population.

The term 4G LTE, for fourth-generation long-term evolution, refers to the latest generation of
wireless technology, which is faster and more reliable than previous technologies.

AT&T officially turned on its 4G LTE network locally in November. Verizon began rolling out
its 4G LTE network in Columbus and other parts of Ohio in December 2010. The difference between 3G
and 4G explains some of Sprint’s lag in the survey, officials at that carrier said.

“Sprint performed on par with competitors in every measure but data speed, and that is because
Sprint 3G is being compared to competitors’ 4G speeds,” a Sprint spokesman said. “Sprint has begun
building out its 4G LTE network in Columbus, and we are eager to bring the speed and power of 4G
LTE to our customers in Columbus.”

T-Mobile had no comment on the RootMetrics report.

In several categories, all four carriers performed well. There were very few call failures for
any of the carriers, for example, and all carriers were close in texting speed and performance.

In Web and app downloading, however, Sprint and T-Mobile were somewhat slower than AT&T and
Verizon.